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Tomorrow is my last final, and I have two papers due. My comic shop is also moving, so for two weeks now I haven’t been getting my comics. Plus I haven’t had time to read any of the comics I do have. I was hoping last week that I would have time, but alas, that didn’t happen.

I also am running into the problem, that for the most part, I don’t have much of a desire to read DC as of late. The constant life or death stuff that it feels like every issuse has is just old now. And the Subjection of Women is old, and I don’t want to beat on that again like a dead horse. And Superman has become the creepist motherfucker to me in their universe. ((Am I the only one who read him pretty much stalking both Diana and Lois in different comics? WHAT THE FUCK GUYS?)) Batman hasn’t had a break, having two events back to back, I don’t give a shit about Justice League any more and Wonder Woman has lost a lot of her appeal to me. I want to get into this a little deeper, and I promise that next week I will be back to poking fun and being my normal crazy self, so just bare with me.

And Marvel is just too good to make jokes about. Which was my point to making this blog….so I am a bit stuck at the moment.

Well, I have a few of the zero comics and I was told one of the comic guys that Batman Detective Comics was one that sold out in about five minutes of the store opening. Thank god for pull list, right?

Anyways, there are a few things I learned from this comic I wanted to share:

1.) Clearly, Batman’s Dick is just attracted to evil, and we knew this, but it is now clear it was pretty much from the start.

2.) We finally know why Bruce will never say that Alfred is his father, because everyone he says is like a parent to him are brutally murdered.

3.) Batman looks funny with a beard. Clearly he is a hairy man, and I mean yeti status.

So there are two stories, one where Bruce is training in Japan and it seems to be he has gone back in time because they are dressed and acting like they are in Kenshin, aka, the Mejia era. So Batman gets a new power, time travel. So we learn Bruce learned to train the kids with verbal abuse because that is how he learned. He also meets a woman, who flirts with him hard core. Oh, and she is totally evil because this is someone Batman is interested in.

Get away, Bitch be evil.

And I just say that seems like lazy fucking writing. Don’t get me wrong, Jania Hudson would have been fun if they didn’t drop her ass out of the series for no reason; but it just seems like lazy writing if you put Batman with a villain. Catwoman is sort of one, she ping pongs between villain and hero a lot, so you can’t say he ever gets over it. It is like, hey, BATMAN, You are a fucking hero. Maybe, maybe you shouldn’t be fucking your villains. It isn’t like your dick is really doing any rehabilitation to them.

And there are moments were you feel he just isn’t trying. Jezzebel Jet for example. He mentions that he knew on their first date she was evil, and still dated her. THAT I DON’T UNDER-FUCKING-STAND. He even told her he was batman. And knew she was evil on their first date. I want to know why the fuck there was a second one then. Or the fact he told her he was batman. Because I would be gone.

Or he pick women that have no personality that the writer feels they need to force on us.

I mean wouldn’t it be awesome, for just once, he dates another vigilante and doesn’t know she is one. Or hell, they both think the other is involved with the mob? So they start playing a cat and mouse game with each other because they are trying to catch each other in the act? Holy shit, I’m going to write and post this. Because it will be awesome. So stay tuned.

I think you shouldn’t have said that.

So you can see where the first story is going if you have read the second comment about it; makes it better, the master told him not to love anyone because it gets in his way of becoming a god. Which I find funny because I always saw Batman’s mission as a labor of love for the people of Gotham; Yes, his parents were the start, but now I really feel he does it for them. He could have stopped when he revenged them. But he hasn’t.

The second one is him coming home to Alfred. Not much to write home about thou it is fun to see Alfred kick ass. Because he is the goddamn butler. And the bat Beard is what I will leave you on.

I don’t know why, I can’t explain it, but I’m in love with this beard. And I want him to have it all the time.

I have been rereading over Final Crisis, Return of Bruce Wayne and a few other trades relating to Batman’s temporary dirt nap or vacation outside of the main storyline, whatever you want to call it. And I have one thing to say that has pretty much been bothering me the first time I read them.

He is making the cave painting wrong. And it bothers me. It bothers me that they couldn’t bother to look up how the fuck cave paintings were made. And don’t be like, well, we didn’t know how they did it and we can do it however.

Because, well, we know how they did it. We know there were a bunch of techniques that our early ancestors used to make cave paintings, the most common being one called stencilling. This involved taking whatever meaning of paint you were using, you chewed it up, and spit it onto the wall: This is nice for archeologist because these paintings tend a lot brighter and easier to study. So when Tim finds it in Iraq, he would be able to see the freaking thing. Not if Bruce just drew it on the wall like they had him do.

You won’t be able to see it Tim, not with that flare….. [Red Robin: The Grail ’10]

And one, Bruce is in Iraq…..IN THE FREAKING PALEOLITHIC. Now, Iraq in the Paleolithic looked way different than it does today. It was green, because it is in what was once called Fertile Crescent (also called the Cradle of Civilization.) Why would one call it this, because, I unno, it is fertile as shit? This is the place were farming was fucking born. Almost like a garden of fucking Eden.

Mmmm….Were is the fucking fertileness? [Return of Bruce Wanye The Deluxe Edition ’11]

So it should be green. Well, greener, they do have a few bits of green. This is where we got lots of herd animals and started farming. If it wasn’t for the Fertile Crescent, life would be nothing like how we know it now. We would probably not have become masters of the land. If we managed to survival at all. I can say that with a lot of certainty. And it isn’t like the Fertile Crescent is a new idea in archeology. No, this idea has been around for at least a hundred years.

These people he is with could be still be hunter and gathers, but they lived were it was green. Living in a desert at this point was suicide. And our Ancestors weren’t stupid. If they were, we would have died out. They went were the food was.

I just wish someone had bothered to look this up. It is on freaking Wikipedia. I can let the cave painting stuff go, but the Fertile Crescent crap I can’t. It doesn’t work for me at all. Why isn’t it green? It would have taken two seconds and I know I’m nitpicking, but this is what I’m studying. So to me, it would have been even more awesome to have them do the freaking research.

So was I the only one who took Freeze to not excaulty knowing his ‘wife’ as a fun turn in the character? I mean, when they brought him in for the animated show, it was clear Nora was his wife and that they were in love at some point. (That was the first time I had seen the character and that is the one I go to for as a base for the character.) You know, before she became an ice cube…But to have him be just her stalker as an intresting direction. It makes me think back to the relationship that Nora and Victor were said to have in the animated seires and question that. After all, he says she is his wife, we have no proof to not believe him. Or believe him. We only have what he has told us. And that is that he has a wife. But we can’t prove if he was lying or not. This seems to show otherwise. Which was nice.

There is a downside. It changes a bit of the nature of what Freeze is, because he always seemed one of Batman’s more symonthic villians. You felt for Freeze, he just wanted to save his wife. It just happened that the only way that he could do to save her was to fall into Super Villainy. It was sad that he had to turn to these things because Now that she isn’t his wife….well, he just comes off a little more creepie. There is a bit of a uniqueness that is gone from him and now he is just another crazy dude out for revenge for a woman he really has no connect to. The idea that their relationship is that of a stalker works well, too, because Victor knows everything about her. She knows nothing of him and he has been able to project his feelings that he need her to feel about him. I think it would be fun if he is able to get ahold of Nora and bring her back. I’m all for character torture and I think having him go on a rampage in Gothman because Batman was right would be awesome. Also seeing him try and make a relationship with this woman would be intresting. Because it really won’t work. I mean, I doubt it won’t work.

And what kinda of Dicks are Nora’s family. They freeze her to give her a chance to live at some other point in time, not knowing if they were going to be able to see her on the other side. So they frooze her so someone in the furture could unfreeze her and everyone she knew would be really old or dead. She was froozen in the 60’s after all. (She was born in 1943, if what batman said is right.)

Batman INC came out yesterday and I’m super excited. Like, crazy excited. I mean, it is Talia verses Bruce and I don’t believe for a second that Batman lost to freaking Talia. Sorry, I don’t. Yea, I know it started out with him being arrested and I’m calling bullshit on that. Why? Because it is fucking Batman. Because he gave death the middle finger like it was nothing. I’m thinking it is part of the plan. This is not how Bruce’s career of batman ends, it can’t. If this is how it is going to end, then they should have left him dead at the end of Final Crisis. Because it is insulting to the reader and the character to have it end this way. He isn’t going to go out like a little bitch. He is going to go out in a blaze of glory I can’t even imagine. Like bare knuckle boxing six Grizzy Bears high on PCP in a wedding dress. Okay….maybe not the wedding dress, but you get the idea. He is going down fighting, not just giving up. I think it has to be a fake out. I mean, this is the man who gives Death the middle finger because he was too busy and used Darksied’s plan to his advantage. He is not going to go out by being arrested. Besides, any changes they have on him, I could see him buying cops off. Or have some plan for it. There has to be a plan for this.

And even he is being completely serious; I don’t see a lot of his crew listening. Dick would keep fighting. Hell Dick would show up as Batman to get Bruce out of jail. Because if Damian is really dead, Dick would be fighting to make that kid’s death mean something, even if Bruce was unwilling to do so. Which I imagine would snap Bruce out of being a little bitch. So the arrest might be him bluescreen of deathing. And he will be back soon enough. Plus there is always the pits and Talia is a big enough of a bitch to throw Damian’s body into a pit. Which would be awesome to see a half mad Damian begging for help. That would be another thing to snap Bruce out of it.

There is another fake out that is also pretty clear, at least to me. Damian isn’t dead. Because, well, he just isn’t. It is gambit. It has to be. I mean, the Kid is only bleeding from the mouth, not the head. That hood covering his head should be coved in blood. It isn’t. He got shot in the face, (at least that what was in the cross hair) he won’t have a face any more. Or it would be a hellva more fucked up than it was. Or if he did get in shot in the head, part of his skull would be missing. And there would be blood on the hood. But not even going with just that, we got a picture, not the body itself. And I have read enough to know you get a body man. Harry Potter taught me that much. Photos can be staged, and if Talia believes it, she is dumber than I though.
Not only that, it is issue one, and I know it is a continuation of a story, but really, they won’t kill him issue one. They would at least wait till issue two. And if they did kill him, Bruce would not lie down and take it. He would turn into PapaBat. The whole thing screams fake out. The whole issue does. Which is fine. It is still enjoyable.

I so have a hard time buying that Batman got shot in the face when he was getting the jump on some guy with a rifle. He was coming up behind this guy and he is fucking BATMAN. And the guy mentions that Robin’s protective hood was down. Bruce earlier gives Damian shit for the wearing the damn thing….If it was protecting him, while the fuck would Bruce tell him to lose it? What is wrong with this picture? Yea, this guy is fucking lying. And looks like Talia is buying it. Bruce also points out that they have all these hitman right where they want them.

Going back to the arrest, it’s a fake out. I am calling shenanigans if it isn’t. You can’t arrest Batman. It just doesn’t make sense. He has to have a plan. This has to be part of the plan. It has to be. After all, he faked that some of his crew is dead. They aren’t. We saw the dead hero club. There is a plan, I think, in all of it. And I can’t buy Batman just giving up. There is no way that he is giving up. I think this is just a way to fuck with Talia. Bruce is making mad grab for cards and I think it is going to work. She would be to excited to think she has him up against a wall. She already thinks she has killed some of his crew and we have the dead Heroes club.

So yea. The title alone gives it away, In the Eye of Leviathan. This is what Talia thinks is happening. Aside from the dead heroes club part, this is all design to make Talia think she is winning. She doesn’t have a body, she has a photograph. And those can lie. If she thinks she is winning, she will get sloppy. And that is what is going on.

I’m enjoying this, clearly. I wouldn’t write a rant going on about how it can’t be happening. I have read this issue like six times already, looking for hints on what is really going on. Plus I will be pissed if they kill off Damian. I love that kid!

But if there is one thing we can take away, it is this. Batcow is the best thing ever. ‘Nuff said.

I am sure you remember a while ago, when I was trying to figure out how all the Batman Comics linked in to each other. If not, you can see it here. Well Batman Detective Comics #9 came out which is part of the event. And apparently happens after Batman #9, which hasn’t come out yet. Yea, that isn’t confusing at all. I don’t understand why we couldn’t do the freaking story in order, because this just adds to my confusion of when shit is happening. So I take it Batman gets out of his house just fine, Nightwing is okay, and there went everything that DC spent time building up. It is a misstep in story telling and it is upsetting. It is like opening a puzzle and someone has put half of it together. And everyone is falling in line to help of course.

He gets better. Thanks for given that away.

Did they forget that they ended Nightwing #8 with his stabbed and bleeding all over the place? I mean, shit, way to just shot that in the foot. Even thought we all know they wouldn’t kill Dick, but really, how the hell did he get out of it?

This is my porn watching time mother fuckers.

Or that Batman was breaking out the heavy armor to fight these guys? Last we saw Batman, he was in his fucking house, kicking the shit out of these guys, but he haven’t won yet. They better not cheat us out of an ass kicking. That would be annoying.

This also ruins my theory that these are taking place at different times. Or at least Detective Comics is on the same period of time that Batman and Batman and Robin is, I can’t say we can really see what order the others fall into until they come out. But I image that they will shoe horn all these to be the same night, which makes the night at least, a billion hours long. Or how did no one notice how many of the owls are running around in Gotham with no press before.

It is a little madding that they gave away pieces of the story before we had a chance to see them in order. I mean, it isn’t like they didn’t know that it was going to come out that way. They did. But they didn’t anyways. Why couldn’t this be Detective Comic #10 then? Most likely because it would be other of order as well, but dammit, they didn’t have to give two things away.

Anyways, two asides, I can’t wait for Batman Incorporated. I would love to see, even though they aren’t normal enough for this to happen, but Tailia and Bruce fighting for Damian in court. I think she will be able to have that kid when she pries him from Bruce’s cold dead hands, if Batman and Robin is anything to go on. And Godvia is becoming a favorite of mine, for the shit she says. She annoyed me at the very first, but dammit if I’m not liking her now. I think that is because she is what I would be like if I was a superhero, asking, what is this bullshit every chance I get. And I would totally have a stupid super power.

So I feel a little dirty calling a Batman comic cute. I mean, come on, you want so much grit in a Batman comic that you are picking dirt out of your teeth. Batman punches people and we root for him to do it, we don’t want him cute. We want him pissed off and beating criminals up for screwing around in his town. Hell, I love him when he is in what I call Papa Bat mode, where you are lucky if you come out with all your limbs in the correct place and angle, and the quickest way to get him in that mode is to attack one of the people he sees as his children. Or the woman he is dating at the time. It is like teabagging a bear cub in front of its mother, and the aftermath is a no holds barred fight with a fucking liger while your arms tied to your feet.

I think the word you were looking for is normal.

But I think about Batman and Robin #8 and all I can think is, holy cow that was adorable. Completely freaking adorable with a capital A. And really, it was. It was human, it was father and son bonding and all that kind of goodness. It ended like it was supposed to. Hell, even the dog got in on the bonding. And Bruce didn’t reject Damian, which is the most important thing, I think.

What you get for taking his ball.

Though I think Titus is my favorite DC character now. Not sure how that happened. But look at him. He is just such a dog. (What, I love dogs and Batman. And they put them together.)

I think one of the things they are handling, storytelling wise, with Batman and Robin is Bruce finally dealing with his parents’ death. At least, I feel like he is trying to put his life back together. It will be interesting to see how he handles that and his role as Batman. Though it is really odd to see him, well, light and without having sarcasm dragging not too far behind, which is really enjoyable.

Well, here goes a crazy train.

Which brings us to the Night of Owls Event….Which I feel is going to fall a little flat for me. I still think it is going to be good, but I have a few problems with it.

After all, I have been trying to figure out how they all link together. Take a look at the list of comics that fall into this event. There is Batman and Robin, Batman, Detective Comics, Dark Knight, All Star Western, Batgirl, Nightwing, Batwing, Catwoman, Birds of Prey, Red Hood, and…I think I am missing one or two but am kinda too lazy to look it up. Pretty much half the DC line up.

Now, Batman and Robin, and Batman the comic seem to be linked. After all, we have seen Damian in that, so I am assuming that they are the same universe, and happening around the same time. And these series seemed to have given the bird to the reboot and just continued doing whatever they wanted too. Not sure if Barbara can walk in that one, I can’t recall seeing her. Which is cool. And for the sake of this argument, is going to be called Batman World 1.

We Know Catwoman and Detective Comics are linked, but I can’t figure out if it is a different timeline, or just floating out there in the ether of whenever the fuck Batman had time. I just don’t feel like this is part of Batman World 1, so this is BatWorld 2. Or if it is connected to Batworld 1, they haven’t shown the link yet, or I missed it completely.

And with Dark Knight Comics, I felt like it was linked to the World with Justice League, just because they had around the same art style and the Justice League has shown up there. So it could be that this is when he is running around in his early years, so it could be part of Batworld 1 or 2, or not in the same world as Justice League, and I was making a silly link. So Batworld 3.

Now, if these are all linked, the order of events matter. They can’t all happen at the same time, there is so much that has gone on in the other comics, they couldn’t fit together. So I am going to propose my order of events in the three Batworlds.

I think Batworld 3 is where Bruce is the youngest. I can’t explain why, but he just feels young in that one, like he is still starting out. And if it is linked with the world with the Justice League, then it is when he is just starting out.

Batworld 2 is the one in the middle for me.

Batworld 3 is where Bruce is the oldest, because, well, he has a ten year old kid.

The question is, are they all linked, and has this been brewing for years in the background? That is a pretty interesting idea, which will be fun to see play out.

With the other comics, I don’t know how they linked up because I was planning on picking up the graphic novels, so I haven’t read them. (Because I only has so much money, and My Fiancé is a Green Lantern fan, so we have enough comics to keep up with, and I can only read so much before it all blends together.) But I am going to guess that All-Western is going to have the birth of the Court of Owls.

But there is another part to this event that really, well, bugs me. Because, for the most part, (at least in the comics I have been reading) we haven’t seen much of Gotham. Of all the DC universes cities, Gotham has always fallen flat for me and it is a big issue when it comes to events like these. Batman knows what he is fighting for, his city, but we never, ever see the people in it. Or if we do, it is in passing. This event could be more than just Batman fighting for control and to keep his place in the underworld. Or if we had more of a connection to Gotham herself, it could be a fight for her very soul. That would be amazing. Think about it. If we know what kind of city Gotham is, whether she is moving more toward a group of people who are starting to put their city together, to bring more wealth and hope to the city, like Bruce is doing to himself; or if it is still the shithole it has always been, where the cops are all moonlighting as monks for some crime boss. I honestly don’t know, and I wish they had done something with that, like give us more of a view, because then this event puts so much more at stake. If Batman loses, what is going to happen to Gotham?

They did a little in Detective Comic, but it is so quick that it is hard to know if we really saw if the city is changing or not.

I still know I am going to enjoy this event, this is the lead up that Batman has been leading up to, and it has been a fun ride. I mean, the mind fuck that was issue #5! I remember reading it, going, what the fuck is going on?! I love this! I will be upset if it falls flat.

I know Batman is going to win. Even if the Court manages to defeat him, they cannot remove Bruce Wayne from Gotham. He is too big of a figure in Gotham to just disappear. So it would be more of a battle being won for the Owls, not a war. He will just come back, and hit harder than his first round. Plus, he is, well, Batman. The man’s theme song should be “I won’t Back Down.”